[lbo-talk] Problems with the Kerala model

[Doug Henwood]

Back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, I was friendly with a guy in the  
UN Press Office who'd originally come from Kerala. He told me that  
the state's problem was that high levels of social development raised  
expectations which the weak economy couldn't deliver on. So people  
emigrated. He applied this analysis to the collapse of communism in  
Eastern Europe - high educational and health levels combined with  
bupkes in the material realm meant a lot of dissatisfaction. Better  
the American way of keeping the poor uneducated & sick!

Doug